There is Something About Focus
This is a beautiful moment.
Fresh out of Sauna. A hot drink and a few cookies waiting next to my computer. All browser tabs closed. Just me, my writing, and a few thoughts that have been growing inside my head and want to get out at last.
Finally focused. Running out of time, yet not busy.
I wish I could say this comes naturally to me. But I can’t.
I am terrible when it comes to focusing and ignoring distractions. Sometimes I feel like a collector of distractions who loves to surround himself with all kinds of blinking gadgets and noisy widgets to keep himself busy and make sure he never gets anything done.
Always Busy
Try this: Whoever you see next — your spouse, your colleague, your hair dresser, anyone — greet her and ask the simple question, “How’s it going?”
Mark down the answer. If you have extra time, repeat.
I believe most will give you a variation of the classic:
Busy as usual.
It’s a fact of life. We are always busy. Always in a rush. And always hoping there would be time for some peace and quiet.
Yet, most of us are not getting that much done. And apparently the ones who get a lot done don’t feel that busy at all. What if there is no correlation at all between the feeling of being busy and productivity? Or what if the correlation is negative?
In this small article, I will present you a simple idea. And then we will discuss it.
Here it goes:
Could it be that we are busy only because we don’t know how to focus?
Let’s make it clear right now: When I say focus, I don’t mean the specialist idea of having just one or two interests and sticking with them for the rest of your life.
Naturally, there is a limit to how many things you can concentrate in during a human life time. But let’s not worry about that right now. It’s more interesting to try to find out the limit by trying.
I don’t believe in magical formulas and silver bullets, but this one is rather close to turning me into a believer: It’s simple. I didn’t invent it. Even scientists are backing it up.
The only downside that I’m aware of is that we are too used to the opposite way of handling our lives.
But I suggest we give it a try anyway. The trick is called single-tasking.
The Experiment
- Pick a handful of your daily activities (I selected four because that looks nice on the blog).
- Think about each of them and try to remember the last time you let yourself immerse totally in the activity and forget all about your other tasks and pressing matters. Was it different from the multi-tasked version?
- If you can’t remember clear, take the experiment to a more practical level and live that moment. Focus one hundred percent and don’t let anything disturb you.
- Review your experiences.
Here are my four activities:
Playing with Oiva
Sometimes, I try to check my email or skim through a few blog posts while I’m playing with my 1.5 years old son, Oiva. It only takes a minute or two for the smart kid to set me straight, but even after that my mind can wander back to the topics I just got a glimpse of.
But what happens is that afterwards, I don’t remember much about those wandering moments. I can’t remember what the email from the fellow blogger said. And I can’t remember what Oiva was doing either. Trying to be efficient turns out to be the opposite.
On the other hand, when I focus in the child’s world, I get to experience play at a whole different level. I get to share the laughter, and the joy that comes from hiding in the corner waiting for daddy to come and search. And I wouldn’t have gotten that work done anyway, so I lose nothing.
At Work
From time to time, many people find it hard to focus at work. It happens to me too.
At those times, I find myself (again) checking email, testing features that have already been well tested, or just surfing the web, all the while trying to get some real work done while switching between windows and tabs.
It just doesn’t work.
I still get a decent work done. But all the fun and excitement is long gone, and I’m feeling stressed out, busy and drained.
On the other hand, if I take a clean break (get a cup of coffee, take a short walk outside, even surf the web without trying to get any work done at all) and then continue the work fully focused, I not only get things done but feel more energized and a lot less busy.
Reading a Blog Post
I have been a skimmer for a long time. And still, although I am constantly reminding myself that text is art and content is king, every now and then I fall in the trap of not giving my full attention to a blog post I am reading.
And I hate it when that happens. Because at those times, I tend to favor the quick and meaningless blog posts and ignore the profound and important. Just because it’s faster — and I am so busy.
The same applies to my email reading habits and all my communication with friends and strangers alike. Busyness makes me favor the simple over the important, but focusing in the important makes me feel less busy.
Because of this realization, I’m fighting my old habits hard. And every time I beat myself into focusing, I end up learning something new, getting to know someone better, or just having a good time.
Relaxing
For someone insanely interested in everything, there are always projects to work on and things to do. That’s why it’s important to realize the big difference between thinking you have to do things and actually doing them.
When you feel that you have to work on your things, but know that you won’t get them done today anyway, I have come to notice that it’s often better to take some time off than to work on your goals half-heartedly.
To feel happy about my life, I need the moments of rest when I tell myself that I don’t have to get anything done. I have learned to take that time from the unproductive evening hours when I wouldn’t get anything done anyway.
The difference between an evening spent surfing the web trying to get something done and an evening spent offline, completely focused in relaxing is huge. And as a side effect, it makes the productive hours much more productive as well!
To sum it up, I have learned that by single-tasking and focusing in one thing at a time, I can be more relaxed, happier and less busy than when I’m shuffling multiple plates at once. And most of the time, it also makes me a lot more productive.
Focus is Just What We Need
'Totally Focused' by Jarkko Laine
Read More: Focus and Flow for the Insanely Interested
“If I were to have an evaluation, I would most likely register as ADD. Individuals with attention deficit disorder tend to be easily distracted, have difficulty keeping their mind on any one thing, and often get bored with a task before it’s completed. Sound familiar?
Yet despite this fact, my family’s biggest complaint was that I was too focused on something else to pay attention to what they were saying. It turns out that another common symptom of ADD is an inability to be distracted from something interesting.”
Click here to read the rest of Joshua Clanton’s article on focus and the state of flow!
When I know that right now, this blog post is just the thing that I’m supposed to be working on, I can ignore the dozens of other projects and be sure that when I decide to work on each of them, that will be the most productive time to get that project moving on.
I believe this is what focus is best for.
Learning to focus makes it possible to have a huge amount of goals and projects at the same time and still not feel stressed out and busy.
In this sense, the skill of focus is most useful for us, the insanely curious and multi-interested. Maybe we won’t be focused for days, or even hours at once, but focusing for even half an hour or fifteen minutes at a time can make a huge difference!
I’m not there yet, and quite often, I still fall into the old ways of busyness. But I have seen what life can be when it’s not characterized by being busy but by living and doing. And I think it’s worth the learning curve!
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Hi Jarkko,
my first comment in your blog. Excellent post! I also share the same opinion. It is funny how things in life tend to keep us always busy, sometimes I feel totally exhausted and sometimes it gives me the kind of rush that keep me focused on a task for several hours.
See you around.
Hi Jarkko,
I almost never give the answer that “I’m busy”. Whenever someone tells me that they’re way too busy, I always wonder what the heck they could possibly be doing to not have any extra time at all. In my mind, a person always has free time for things that are important to them. Perhaps this all relates to focus. I try to focus on what is required and drop the rest. I have some extremely talented friends of mine who are “always busy”, but always seem to have time to watch television. I always imagine what they could accomplish if they just concentrated on a few things. Great post!
Great post, Jarkko! I agree 100%. Focusing is very important and often really challenging to accomplish fully. Actually, there is a word for the state of mind when one is fully focused. It’s called “being in the zone”. Many of the successful people know what it is. For example, Ayrton Senna, probably the greatest F1 driver of all time knew the secret of ‘the zone’ and beat all his adversaries easily. Personally I have got into the zone many times while creating 3d art or studying intensively. And it’s exactly how you said. The key is to focus on just one thing at the time. Single-tasking all the way!
I don’t complain I am busy. I just often say how I wished the day lasted more hours :)
We all define “free time” or “extra time” differently. Is it the activities that don’t (directly?) bring us income? Or is that the time you spent in front of the TV or reading a book or the time spent with your family?
So far, I learned why it is difficult for me to focus my thoughts only one task, but what I am still trying to figure out is how to solve this issue. For example, while I’m working on a task there is a small zillion of thoughts flashing through my mind – I am generally thinking about “the things I should/could do after I’m done with the current task”. Since my thoughts go into details (of how am I going to tackle those (future) tasks) I always turn into writing them down.
Yes, I work with less efficiency. And yes, I am everything but focused.
But what happened to me when I tried to disregard all these “extra thoughts” and focus on my task or “single-task” is that after I was done with the work – I felt completely lost and “planless”. While the results were “much more perfect” and my time was much more efficiently spent, a gun pointed to my forehead could not make me remember all the things I “wanted to do after”. And in moments like those I tend to turn to “the simple over the important” things… And that’s how the “time after the task” gets less efficiently spent.
I still shape the definition of my “empty activities” and day by day I try to reduce them as much as possible…
@Caio: Thanks for your first comment!
@Steve: Good point. I haven’t been watching TV for a year or so, and now I feel I wouldn’t even know how to make time for it in my daily schedule :)
But then again, I always seem to find time for surfing the web, so yep, I’m guilty as well. On the other hand, I believe it’s important to have some unproductive time as well – as long as you make sure you are aware that you’re relaxing and don’t try to “work”.
@Jetro: Yep, I’ve heard that being in the zone is amazing (did you check out Joshua’s post on Flow yet, it’s about the same topic)! I don’t think I’ve entered that zone many times, though. Sometimes when writing, I get close. But even then, there are the new ideas to check out that Dren mentions – always ready to break my focus.
@Dren: You know, I’m a lot like you. My focus is easily interrupted by different things I want to work on later when I have time. (Like now, while writing this comment, I just remembered that I need to send an email to someone…)
What I try to do to both focus and at the same time not forget my next ideas is that when I have another idea, I try to really quickly write it down. I try to do it so quickly that I don’t lose my focus. Doesn’t always work, and I’m not sure if it’s the correct thing to do (Barbara Sher, in her book “Refuse to Choose” offers a different idea: go with the new idea and then return to focus on your initial work again).
What do you think?
I think that regardless of our striving to be in the zone, to single-task or to focus – it is our brains that are multi-tasking, whether we like it or not ;)
And I’m definitely going to read “Refuse to Choose”. No more new bullets in my BooksToRead list!
@Dren: I’ve been thinking about your comment quite a bit today, and I think I’ll write a full blog post on my thoughts (after the next scheduled one, “Postman Pat”).
But now, I’m thinking that what really matters is that we set ourselves up for focus. Because we know that we are easily distracted, we need to turn off the distractions that are not doing us any good (TV, phone, instant messengers, Twitter, Plurk, other browser tabs, and so on…)
Naturally we cannot turn off our brains. But that might not be a problem, because the multitasking that originates from your own brain is most likely useful. If you come up with a new idea, following it a bit more might be a good idea.
Does this make any sense? :)
…oh, and after you have read “Refuse to Choose”, you might want to check out “The Renaissance Soul” as well :)
The two books complement each other rather nicely.
Hi Jarkko,
I very much am intrigued by this whole concept of single-tasking. We’ve been living in a world where we hear so much about multi-tasking to get things done. And when I hear of single-tasking — the thing that stands out IS focus. We can be completely focused on that one thing. And it just seems like this is the way to give that thing the best we have. I’m going to give this a try. I think that I sometimes do it, but more often than not – I am NOT focused enough to give my best effort. Thank you!
Lance´s last blog post: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
@Lance: Good luck to your single-tasking efforts! Let me know how it goes :)